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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29834673">Now that Lilacs are in Bloom</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/neednot/pseuds/neednot'>neednot</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The X-Files</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>AU, F/M, Scully is a spy AU, Vignette, also bisexual scully, or a reference to bisexual Scully!, originally posted this back in 2017 and am editing and revising and here we are!, tbh I love this story still cannot wait to see what people think, there is no rape on the page but there is mention of Scully's abductions</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 21:34:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,313</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29834673</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/neednot/pseuds/neednot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“You want me to spy.”<br/>They shift. Spy is a dirty word here, a word of treason and betrayal.<br/>But she is treasonous. They want her to betray Fox Mulder, she knows. She's already betrayed herself. </i><br/><br/>It's 1992, and Dana Scully has been assigned to be Fox Mulder's new partner, a pawn in a war she does not understand. She is supposed to spy on Mulder and report back, but as she grows closer to him, she realizes he may be the only one she can actually trust.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Fox Mulder/Dana Scully</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>50</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. i - iii</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h3>i. 1992</h3>
<p>They’ve stuck him in the basement, away from everyone else. She wonders fleetingly if it’s because they’re scared of him, of his ideas.</p>
<p>
  <em>Find out what he knows.</em>
</p>
<p>She smooths her skirt and knocks on the basement door. There’s no going back from this. Once she’s seen him, he’s seen her—</p>
<p>There is no going back. But there was no going back two years ago. There was no going back when she was lying on a metal table—</p>
<p>But she can’t think that.</p>
<p>“Nobody down here but the FBI’s most unwanted,” a male voice calls, and she thinks, <em>But they do want you. Your research. You just don’t know it yet.</em></p>
<p>Her first impression of him is of a boy she dated in high school, single-minded and driven (though the high school boy only had sex on his mind.)</p>
<p>His face is boyish, youthful exuberance. She’s heard of him—who hasn’t?</p>
<p>But she cannot, will not be drawn in by him, by boyish charm. She is here to prove him wrong.</p>
<p>(She is here to spy on him and report back, but he will never know that.)</p>
<p>Why, she knows he would ask. Why risk everything reporting back to men on a cause she isn’t invested in?</p>
<p>Maybe because she doesn’t expect to find anything.</p>
<p>This is what she has to do to succeed, as a woman—sleep or spy, love or betray. They will never take her seriously if she doesn’t do this.</p>
<p>She is drawn to him immediately, his drive and charm. She knows who he is, has read his work. She knows him on paper like she knows her own skin (because it’s her job. Because she’s required to.)</p>
<p>(Because she might cannot like him.)</p><hr/><h3>before: 1992</h3>
<p>Her legs are crossed, plastic chair digging into the backs of her knees where her skirt doesn't quite cover. She hates herself for wearing something so feminine because she knows they're staring.</p>
<p>Two years with them, two years doing mundane field work and trying to forget what they've tried to hard to prepare her. for, two years in a lab late at night researching a cure for what's coming.</p>
<p>They think she is the cure. She's not so sure, though she's stared at her own cells until she's gone cross-eyed.</p>
<p>They think he knows something.</p>
<p>“What do you know of Fox Mulder?” one of them asks her.</p>
<p>“I know he's an Oxford-educated psychologist,” she says. “I know his reputation.”</p>
<p>The man takes his glasses off his face, leans forward. “What do you know of his theories?”</p>
<p>She shifts in the chair uncomfortably. “They deal with the paranormal, not much other than that.”</p>
<p>“We think he knows something.”</p>
<p>“What?” she asks. The man doesn't respond. She presses—<em>“What?”</em></p>
<p>“Agent Scully...”</p>
<p>“You've taken two years of my life for this research,” she says. “What does he know? What do you think he knows?”</p>
<p>“We think he knows when it will happen. We think he knows what's coming.”</p>
<p>She blanches. “What does that have to do with me?”</p>
<p>Another man speaks up. His gaze of her is scrutinizing, intense. She is a sample under a microscope.</p>
<p>She fingers the ends of her hair while she waits for him to speak. She can't get used to the red. Her own hair is a mousy brown, but they told her he likes redheads.</p>
<p>
  <em>Draw him in. Let him fall in love with you. This is what he likes.</em>
</p>
<p>Her mother cried when she saw it. “It's not you,” she said, and how could Scully explain that she hadn't been herself for two years, not since they'd recruited her for this project, that she was just a shell they were filling up, a tool in their plan.</p>
<p>“What does this have to do with me?” she repeats. The red fills her with a fire, hot rage. This is not who she is.</p>
<p>“We want you to find out what he knows.”</p>
<p>“You want me to spy.”</p>
<p>They shift. Spy is a dirty word here, a word of treason and betrayal.</p>
<p>But she is treasonous. They want her to betray Fox Mulder, she knows. She's already betrayed herself.</p><hr/><h3>before: 1989</h3>
<p>She is at the Academy. She is young and starry eyed and she wants to change the world.</p>
<p>They tell her she can change the world.</p>
<p>They tell her she can make a difference.</p>
<p>How can she refuse?</p><hr/><h3>before: 1990</h3>
<p>She never knew any of them by name, and if she tries she can barely remember their faces. They told her it was a routine medical screening, standard FBI procedure. But nothing feels standard about cold metal under her back or leather straps around her wrists.</p>
<p>She smells a hospital, a normally comforting smell to her but suddenly it's tinged with something foreign, bitter acrid smoke.</p>
<p>And there is a man and he is leaning in her face, placing a mask over her nose, saying it'll be over soon and it won't hurt.</p>
<p>Instinct kicks in, too slow. She tries to kick and fight and maybe they're surprised because she gets the advantage for a second.</p>
<p>But then there's a needle in her arm and she doesn't remember anything after that.</p><hr/><h3>ii. 1992</h3>
<p>He asks her medical opinion like he’s mocking her, and she has to fight the urge to be defensive.</p>
<p>This is what he wants. Spy on him. Learn his secrets. Learn what he knows.</p>
<p>
  <em>Maybe you can explain to me why it’s Bureau policy to label these cases as unexplained phenomena.</em>
</p>
<p>He leans closer to her like he’s telling her a secret.</p>
<p>“Do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrials?”</p>
<p>She smirks. It feels strange on her face.</p>
<p>“Logically, I would have to say no.”</p>
<p>He can’t even tell it’s a lie.</p><hr/><h3>iii. 1992</h3>
<p>It is easy for her to rebuff him. This is her cover, what they told her to do. When he tells her about the girl in Oregon.</p>
<p>
  <em>Pretend like you don’t believe him.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>”The answers are there. You just have to know where to look.”</em>
</p>
<p>She wonders if he looks hard enough, will he see why she’s really there?</p>
<p>She almost wants him to.</p>
<p>She goes home. Shucks off the too big suit and shucks off her persona at the same time. Runs the water for a bath, and calls her mother. Her poor mother who knows nothing except her daughter is caught up in something bigger than herself, her daughter works for the FBI and wants to save the world.</p>
<p>“They’ve assigned me to someone new,” she says.</p>
<p>“Is he nice?” Maggie asks.</p>
<p>But that’s the wrong question.</p>
<p>“Nice enough.”</p>
<p>She’s never told her mother what they’ve done to her, what they’ve made her into. Her mother cried over her hair color changing. She can’t bear the pity that would be on her face if she knew what else they had done.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. iv-v</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h3>iv. 1992</h3><p>The way he drives is frightening. Her nails dig into her thighs and she resists the urge to grab the door handle, to show any sort of fear to him.</p><p>He has a lot of bad habits. This she hadn’t read about. An oral fixation, obnoxious snacking on sunflower seeds and tossing the shells out of the window. When he runs out of shells, he chews on the end of a pen he found in the console. She resists the urge to take it from him.</p><p>She wants a cigarette. She has bad habits, too, though he hates women who smoke so she’s learning to curb the impulse. But she is itching for a cigarette. That plane ride made her antsy, nervous; the drive from the airport to the small town of Bellefleur even more so.</p><p>
  <em>That’s pretty good, Scully.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Better than you expected or better than you’d hoped?</em>
</p><p>The radio starts to change, and she covers her ears. “What’s going on?” she asks, like she doesn’t already know.</p><p>She plays dumb, like she’s supposed to, and he never knows the difference.</p><p>
  <em>“Did you figure out what that little thing up Ray Soames’ nose is yet?”</em>
</p><p>She knew. She knew the moment she saw it it was some sort of implant, some sort of crude, early prototype.</p><p>Anger burns in her chest, but only for a moment. They’re just <em>kids</em> they’re testing.</p><p>But wasn’t she a kid herself, when they recruited her?</p><p>She wishes she had her samples to compare. But they’re back in Washington, back in the small lab she still visits on occasion.</p><p>So she puts the sample away. She’ll tell Mulder she found nothing.</p><p>It’s almost the truth.</p><h3>before: 1990</h3><p>They have her studying her own genetic material like it’s some kind of sick joke. They stick her in a lab and give her an assistant—Julie, who’s as young and naive as Scully was years ago.</p><p>Julie doesn’t know it’s Scully’s own material she’s studying. But she calls her Dana and sends her glances from across the room. She steals kisses from her in the stairwell and asks too many questions about what they’re studying, and it breaks Scully’s heart because she can’t fall in love, not now.</p><p>And one day Julie doesn’t show up anymore. The man is there, examining Scully’s work when she comes in. She doesn’t tell him not to smoke in her lab. It’s not even really hers.</p><p>“She’s gone, isn’t she?”</p><p>“I thought you were smarter than that.”</p><p>He cuffs her on the chin as he passes, almost affectionately, and she shudders violently away from his touch. It takes two whole days of research, of burying herself in genetic material and samples, before she feels back to normal.</p><p>There are no more assistants after that.</p><h3>before: 1989</h3><p>She calls her sister.</p><p>“I got a job offer. FBI.”</p><p>“Dana...”</p><p>“I know. I <em>know</em>.”</p><p>“I don’t like this. This feels wrong.”</p><p>“Can you come see me?”</p><p>Her sister comes up for the weekend. Big hair, bright pink lipstick. Scully immediately feels small next to her, but not in a bad way. Her sister has always taken up more space, and she’s always been grateful for that. Sometimes it’s just easier to be Melissa Scully’s little sister.</p><p>“So what do they want, the FBI? Did they read your thesis?”</p><p>They’re on Scully’s bed, sitting, chatting. Melissa’s snacking on a bowl of popcorn and for a second it feels like they’re back at home, during one of the times they were close, hiding away from their brothers.</p><p>“I don’t know if they read my thesis.” Scully says, frowning. “I mean. I don’t know why they’d care about rewriting Einstein.”</p><p>“It was a good thesis.”</p><p>“Like you read it.”</p><p>Melissa sticks her tongue out. “Seriously. What do they want you to do?”</p><p>“I don’t know. Medical research, probably? They want me working in tandem with the CDC, just for awhile, which...” Scully frowns. “I don’t know. Research.”</p><p>“You know how I feel about the government.”</p><p>“Since when did you become a conspiracy theorist?” Scully asks.</p><p>“I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I’m a born again spiritualist,” Melissa says loftily, but Scully knows she isn’t kidding. “But it’s just... odd, isn’t it? I mean. You’re studying to be a doctor. Why would the FBI want you?”</p><p>“Gee, thanks,” Scully says, but the same question has been rattling around in her brain. She looks down at her hands. “I mean... It’s a good offer. Room, board, half my tuition at the Academy paid for, a chance to do research, possibly an assistant...” She twirls a strand of hair around her finger.</p><p>Melissa stops chewing and frowns intently at her. “You already accepted, didn’t you?”</p><p>Scully nods. Melissa pushes herself off the bed and stands, frowning down at her little sister.</p><p>“Dana, what was the point of even asking me here if you didn’t need me?”</p><p>“I do need you,” Scully said. “I just... made up my mind already.”</p><p>“You’re just like Dad,” Melissa scoffs. “You don’t even know what they’re asking you to do! You don’t know you can trust them, they may be asking you to--commit treason, or something.”</p><p>“They wouldn’t,” Scully says, but truth is her sister is right--she has no idea what she’s getting into.</p><p>But that’s just it. For once in her life she wanted to be reckless, wanted to make a decision based on what felt good without rationally weighing the pros and cons.</p><p>Besides, she figures, she can always leave if she needs to.</p><p>Melissa spends the rest of the weekend with Dana, though there’s tension between them, the relationship strained.</p><p>“I still don’t think you should do it,” she says again Sunday as Scully is walking her to her car.</p><p>“I’m not going to change my mind,” she says stubbornly.</p><p>“Not even for your sister? This is giving me seriously bad vibes.”</p><p>“I’m not going to turn down a perfectly good offer because of... because of bad juju, or whatever!” Scully snaps. “Melissa, can’t you just--can’t you just support me? Please?”</p><p>This time it’s Melissa’s turn to frown and look away.</p><p>“You know I love you,” she says quietly. “I just think you’re making the wrong decision. Please, <em>please</em> think about it, okay?”</p><p>“Okay,” Scully says, though they both know it’s futile. She gives her sister a tight hug and watches as she gets in her car and drives away.</p><p>It’s the last time they’ll ever talk about it.</p><h3>before: 1990</h3><p>It comes to her in the night, in flashes, in fits and spurts and fear and cigarette smoke. What they did. What they wanted her to forget.</p><p>They took her eggs. There are cuts near her hip bones they tried to explain away.</p><p>She wants a second opinion. She goes to Planned Parenthood under a false name. She pretends she’s hiding from an abusive ex. That’s what it feels like.</p><p>They tell her. They question more but she brushes them off and runs out before they can figure anything else out, before they can report the young woman with scars on her hips and nails bitten down to the quick.</p><p>She cries herself to sleep in her dorm. <em>Those bastards,</em> she thinks, and it only makes her feel marginally better.</p><p>She questions one of them, later. <em>What did you do to me?</em></p><p>
  <em>We took your eggs. We need them. We’re sorry we couldn’t tell you, but it’s for the greater good. You’ll see.</em>
</p><p><em>Why me</em>? she asks.</p><p>No one answers.</p><h3>v. 1992</h3><p>“Dammit, Mulder, cut the crap. What do you know about those marks, what are they?”</p><p>They square off, stare at each other. He knows she’s been assigned to debunk him. She knows this is more than a routine case, that he knows more than he’s letting on. But she almost doesn’t want him to tell her. If he tells her she’ll have to report it; she’ll have to let them know.</p><p>“So you can put it down in your little report? I don’t think you’re ready for what I think.”</p><p>She stops cold. Someone has thrown ice water on her.</p><p>
  <em>Does he know does he know does he know?</em>
</p><p>No. He can’t know why she’s really here. They’ve taken every precaution. He means the report she’s supposed to give to Skinner like a good little field agent.</p><p>“I’m here to solve this case, Mulder,” she says, indignant. “I don’t know about you, but I’m here to find the truth.”</p><p>(The lie blazes in her chest all the same.)</p><p>“Truth? I think those kids have been abducted.” He says it with such fervor, such conviction, and she believes him because she knows. Is this Ground Zero? Is this where it starts? Is this why he brought her here, is the end closer than she realized, than they’ve all realized?</p><p>She pretends like she doesn’t believe him. She spins her skepticism, tells him something about the forest, gets him focused on that.</p><p>But the word rings in her ears long after.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. vi - viii</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h3>vi. 1992</h3><p>There is genuine fear in her voice when she comes to him in his motel room that first night. That is not a lie. But she knows they’re mosquito bites. She knows what the real marks look like.This is how she’s supposed to draw him in—play scared, show some skin.</p><p>(She shivers when he touches her. She’s not supposed to do that.)</p><p>His fingers reach around when she turns, brush the scar above her hipbone. He frowns.</p><p>“Let me see that.”</p><p>“It’s nothing. Surgery,” she says lightly, but she can tell he doesn’t believe her.</p><p>“We’re partners,” he says, his brow furrowed. “Don’t you trust me?”</p><p>“Mulder, I’ve known you one day,” she says. She pulls her robe closed, sits in the old, dark green chair by the window, legs tucked up under her.</p><p>“That’s not what I asked.” He stares at her with the intensity she believes he reserves for interrogations.</p><p>“I can’t tell you,” she says. “I’m sorry.” She knows it's not an answer to his question, and he knows it too, from the look on his face. But he doesn’t push her.</p><p>Later, she is lying on his bed while he sits at the foot, looking up at her.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> There is something so open and vulnerable about the way he looks at her, like he trusts her already, which she knows is a mistake.</span></p><p>(She is drawn to him, then. She wants him to touch her again, wants him to lay her down on that bed <em>and and and—)</em></p><p>But such things are forbidden.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> And s</span>he tells herself it’s because she’s lonely, because no one has touched her in so long. Not because it’s him. Because she cannot like him. Because she is <strike>supposed</strike> going to betray him.</p><p>“My sister was abducted,” he says, out of the blue. But she knows it isn’t; she knows it’s his way of getting her to talk.</p><p>The word <em>abducted</em> hits her like a punch it the gut. She doesn’t let on. Can’t let on.</p><p>But she lets him tell her, and she listens. He tells her they took his sister and now he’s devoted his life to this cause and she thinks, <em>he doesn’t know</em>. She is skeptical of aliens, she believes they’re a made-up children’s story to hide the real monsters, men with a bomb who want to level the world and blame it on other forces.</p><p>But he knows what’s coming. And they believe him. And from what she’s seen, she knows she should, too.</p><p>Truth is, she doesn’t know if he’s right or not. She only knows what they’ve told her: The end is coming, and Fox Mulder knows when it will happen. The end is coming, and her cells are the only thing that can stop it.</p><p>She’s seen things, sure. That she can’t deny, things that can’t be explained away. Whether that’s truly aliens or men she already knows she can’t trust, she can’t say.</p><p>She wants to trust him, but she shouldn’t.</p><p>Sometimes it’s easier <strike>harder</strike> to pretend.</p><h3>before: 1990</h3><p>It’s been a week since her surgery.</p><p>She calls Melissa again, tears in her voice she tries to fight off. “They did something to me,” she breathes, quietly, and there’s the tone of the line going dead and then a few short <strike>long</strike> hours later her sister is at her door, holding her.</p><p>Dana shows her the scars, and Melissa bites her lip the way she always has when she’s angry but doesn’t want anyone to know it.</p><p>“We have to get you out of here,” she says, and to her surprise, Dana blanches at the thought.</p><p>“I can’t leave,” she says. “If I leave they’ll just do this to someone else.”</p><p>Melissa stares hard at her. “Dana…”</p><p>“I just have to be careful,” she says, unconvincingly. “That’s all.”</p><p>Melissa purses her lips, but she doesn’t say anything else.</p><p>She spends the rest of the weekend trying to help Dana forget, help her forget what’s been done to her. They go to one of the parks near campus and buy hot dogs from a vendor, sit on a bench and try to enjoy the early April air.</p><p>“We should go see the cherry blossoms,” Melissa says, but Dana doesn’t respond. She’s staring across the park, eyes wide.Melissa squints, following her line of sight. A man is watching them, and he could be any man in a suit out on a smoke break, yet she knows he isn’t.</p><p>He makes eye contact with Melissa, who shudders and turns to her sister.</p><p>“Who is that?” she asks, but Dana doesn’t answer. Instead, she stands abruptly, hands visibly shaking.</p><p>She doesn’t say anything until they get back to her dorm room, where she collapses on her bed and buries her face in her hands.</p><p>“You have to get out of here,” Melissa says decisively. “Now. Come on.”</p><p>“I can’t,” Dana says. “They won’t let me leave, I’ve signed a contract and everything.”</p><p>“They’re following you.”</p><p>“I know,” she says, then looks up at her sister. “You can’t come visit me anymore.”</p><p>Melissa pales. “<em>What?”</em></p><p>“If they know who you are—”</p><p>“This is bullshit,” Melissa says, and Dana flinches because it’s not like her sister to swear. “Just… come home with me for the weekend. We’ll figure something out.”</p><p>“I can’t.”</p><p>“You don’t want to,” Melissa challenges, and Dana stands, wrapping her arms around herself. “You like feeling important, you always have.”</p><p>“Melissa, please…”</p><p>“I’m here to help you if you want it,” Melissa says. “Just… call me when you’re ready to get out of here, okay?”</p><p>She picks up her bags and leaves Dana alone, forgetting half her things, just filled with a burning need to get out of there.</p><p>They watch her leave.</p><p>Dana is awakened by a knock on her door at 2am, and her first thought is <em>it’s them.</em></p><p>But she comes to the door in an old t-shirt and pants, and the RA is standing there with a pained expression on her face.</p><p>“Your mother’s on the phone—”</p><p>She walks back down the hallway to the office, picks up the corded phone.</p><p>Somehow she already knows. Her mother’s crying doesn’t register, only the words <em>your sister your sister your sister</em> as steady as her own heartbeat.</p><h3>vii. 1992</h3><p>She goes back to the motel.</p><p>They’re going to find his research. It’s too early, too early, too early and they will ruin everything.</p><p>She fishes a cigarette out of her purse, glances down at the lighter.</p><p>They can’t find it. Not yet.</p><p>She smokes and brushes her teeth, then lights another cigarette and puts it out on the bedspread.</p><p>By the time the fire alarm rings, she’s long gone.</p><h3>before: 1992</h3><p>She didn't think she would see him again, but there he is. He is there when they assign her to Mulder. He was one of the ones who recruited her, in the beginning. His face may always be obscured by smoke but there's something familiar in his posture.</p><p><em>Did you hold me down?</em> she wants to ask, yet she knows he didn't. He watched from behind a one way mirror. Men like him don't like to get their hands dirty, she knows.</p><p>The way he looks at her makes her feel small. It always has.</p><p>She has always hated feeling small.</p><h3>viii. 1992</h3><p>She laughs with him in the rain, and it’s genuine.</p><p>She shouldn’t want this. Oh, she shouldn’t.</p><p>(She does anyway.)</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. ix-x</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h2>ix. 1992</h2><p>She writes two reports. One for Skinner, who knows nothing. She almost pities him.</p><p>One for them, who know everything, who control everything, control <em>her,</em> and she does not omit anything, she reports everything back like the perfect little traitor she is, because she has no other choice.</p><p>Because of what they took from her. What they will not give her back.</p><h2>x. 1992</h2><p>He drops her off after their case. She mumbles a silent thank you as she gets out of the car and goes inside her apartment, still bare-bones after all these months, as lacking in any personal touch as she is. Once in, she strips her clothing off, grabs the box of red hair dye and heads to the bathroom. Her scalp burns, but she lets it. It’s punishment for her treachery.</p><p>She bends over to shave her legs. And she thinks more red hair dye is dripping down but the color is far too dark and she knows.</p><p>It’s blood.</p><p>She is dizzy. Lightheaded. And she closes her eyes to let it pass and</p><p>Down</p><p>She</p><p>Goes.</p><hr/><p>When she wakes it’s to knocking on her door, her face in the tub, cold water stinging her body like needles and Mulder’s face over her.</p><p>“Scully, Scully,” he says. “Are you okay?”</p><p>“I’m fine,” she lies. “I’m fine.”</p><p>She can’t tell him. Can’t let him worry about her. If he worries it means he cares. And he can’t. It will hurt him more when she betrays him and she can’t have that on her conscience.</p><p>She does not ask him how he knew, why he’s even in her apartment, <em>how</em> he even got in. She doesn’t even feel embarrassed at him seeing her naked; she’s long gotten over the shock of men seeing her body, of their cold analysis of it.</p><p>She closes her eyes so he won’t ask her any more questions, and when she opens them, he’s—</p><p>Gone.</p><h2>prelude. t s eliot</h2><p><em>“You are invulnerable, you have no Achilles' heel.</em><br/>You will go on, and when you have prevailed<br/>You can say: at this point many a one has failed.”</p><h2>before: 1992</h2><p>They will never tell her what's coming. What she's preparing for, studying her own material.</p><p>She finds out entirely by accident, walking past a room with a door open, there late-night yet again poring over her own DNA, her own blood samples. There are bruises in her arms from constantly sticking herself, and she knows she'd look like a drug addict to anyone on the outside.</p><p>She has a cigarette between her fingers, unlit, waiting for the right moment. It's the only thing that stops her hands from shaking, lately.</p><p>It's January. She's been working for them for almost two years, and she wonders how long she'll continue, what exactly she's doing there.</p><p>It's almost been two years since Melissa's death, but she won't think about that.</p><p>She walks down the hallway, cigarette dangling between her fingertips, past a closed door with a window, a light on even though she thought she was the only one here.</p><p>She risks it, peers in the door. There’s a table of men, sitting in a circle, like a teacher’s conference and she the reprimanded child.</p><p>She gets down on her hands and knees, scoots herself as close as she can to the crack at the bottom of the door.</p><p>They’ve told her nothing. Two years and they’ve told her nothing about what they’re preparing her for, what she’s studying, why her.</p><p>What happened to Julie. What happened to her sister.</p><p>She’s as in the dark as she was two years ago, yet no more naive. She is older. Wiser. Trusts no one except herself, studying her cells with shaking nicotine-stained fingers. She does not see any other students. She gets to the lab in the morning and leaves late at night and it almost feels like she doesn’t even work for the FBI, that she is just in the lab.</p><p>A lab rat. Or just a rat.</p><p>Their voices are muffled but she’s been trained in the art of secrets, here, so she picks out what she can.</p><p>“…Is she any closer?”</p><p>“We don’t know.”</p><p>“It would help if she knew what she was looking for.”</p><p>“Do we even know what she’s looking for?”</p><p>“We need to prepare her.”</p><p>“Mulder knows.”</p><p>She frowns.</p><p>It’s the first time she’s heard the name Mulder, the first inkling of another person involved who is not her.</p><p>It eats at her.</p><p>What does Mulder know? And who is he?</p>
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. xi-xiii</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h2>xi. 1993. Early January.</h2><p>His hand is at her throat and her back is against some cheap motel wall and she has long stopped feeling fear but she feels it now. She didn’t peg him to be violent. But he has a temper and she’s made him lose it.</p><p>“Tell me,” he says. “I need to hear you say it.”</p><p>“Mulder, I’m not a spy. I’m <em>not</em>.”</p><p>She can tell he doesn’t believe her. There’s regret on his face when he releases her but it’s only regret at his own actions.</p><p>She can’t look him in the eye the rest of the week.</p><h2>before: 1992</h2><p>They enter her space—two of them, the smoking one and another man, tall and gaunt and stretched, a man on a wire.</p><p>“Test this,” they say, handing her a vial.</p><p>“What is it?” she asks.</p><p>“Just test it,” they say.</p><p>It’s been two days since she overheard them. She went home, back to her apartment, waited forever for the computer to connect and typed in Fox Mulder’s name.</p><p>Here is what she knows: he’s an Oxford educated psychologist, an expert profiler. Beyond that, there’s little to no information on him. She knows he’s joined the FBI, but what he does there, she has no clue.</p><p>The substance in the vial is dark, inky. She tips it, watches the viscosity of the liquid, how thick it is. It reminds her of nights spent helping her dad change the oil in the car before a trip, since her brothers wouldn’t do it and Melissa was too squeamish.</p><p>“What am I testing this with?” she asks, but she already knows the answer.</p><p>She stays late at night, testing the substance with a multitude of things, watching as it attacks and absorbs and changes the DNA of everything she tests it with, mimicking and multiplying at a deadly rate.</p><p>The final test is herself.</p><p>She pricks her finger, puts her blood on a slide, and waits. Watches. Her cells fight back, and she understands—</p><p>This is what they’re keeping her for.</p><h2>xii. 1992</h2><p>Mulder has an informant.</p><p>She followed him to the bar. She is good at making herself unseen when she needs to.</p><p>She knows she should report this. But she knows, too, they probably already know. And as long as Mulder gets the information, what does it matter where it comes from?</p><p>His informant is a man. They are always men. He passes him an envelope while she sits in a corner booth and sips on a drink.</p><p>They want a report. This week, of everything she’s seen.</p><p>What has she seen?</p><p>What does he know?</p><p>Hell, what does she know?</p><p>She knows this: she does not know enough for them to consider her useful.</p><p>So when Mulder and the man leave the bar, she slips out and follows them.</p><h2>xiii. 1992.</h2><p>She follows Mulder and his informant, sticking to shadows, back places, hoping her red hair doesn’t give her away.</p><p>The informant gives Mulder a packet and walks away. She wants to follow him, thinks of following him, but where Mulder is getting his information doesn’t matter. Mulder matters. What he knows matters.</p><p>She thinks back to Billy Miles, to the implants. The one in Ray Soames’ nose was a crude prototype, but Ray Soames had been dead for years. They could be getting more advanced.</p><p>They could be getting closer than she thought. Than any of them thought.</p><p>And she realizes with a jolt, though perhaps she’s always known, that those men in power—they know nothing. They are men in suits afraid of the end of the world and willing to do anything to protect themselves in the process.</p><p>That’s why they want her. Why they want him. They need all the information they can get to protect themselves. They don’t care the cure is killing her. They don’t care if he dies, as long as she gets them their information.</p><p>She’s being used, and for the first time, she’s angry about it.</p><p>She tails Mulder back to an apartment on the edge of town, watches as he enters the building, wishes she could follow him up.</p><p>But then there’s a smell in her nose, tangy and metallic, and her head is light.</p><p>She’s going to pass out here. And he can’t find her, if he does he’ll start asking more questions, and she cannot have him do that. Not yet.</p><p>She presses the edge of her shirt to her face and sinks down into the alley, waiting for the nausea to pass.</p>
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<a name="section0006"><h2>6. xiv-xviii</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h2>xiv. January, 1993.</h2><p>And so they continue on and on, her dutifully taking her notes, a copy for Skinner, a copy for them.</p><p>She warms up to him. Mulder. Slowly. It happens during the case with Tooms, when she’s being attacked, when he comes in and saves her.</p><p>Well. She saves herself. Let him think what he wants.</p><p>It’s his first time inside her apartment. The first time he ever asks the phrase, looking around at her bare-bones furniture, no family photos, nothing signifying she has a life.</p><p>“Are you spying on me?”</p><p>Later he’ll ask it with his hands around her neck, but for now, it’s still a joke.</p><p>“Why would you think that?” she asks lightly, towel-drying her hair, hands still shaking from the attack, though she won’t let him see that.</p><p>He gives her no response except a wan smile. And to her surprise, she smiles back.</p><p>She cannot let herself fall for him.</p>
<h2>xv. 1993</h2><p>For the first time, she truly thinks it, dares to let the words cross through her brain, volatile and fleeting.</p><p>
  <em>I don’t want to do this anymore.</em>
</p>
<h2>xvi. 1993</h2><p>He keeps getting reports. She keeps filing her own, following his meetings with his informant.</p><p>Things remain the same, until they don’t. Until Colonel Budahas goes missing, and she knows immediately, ice in her heart.</p><p>They’re recruiting more. More men and women with skills they think they will need.</p><p>(And so it will happen sooner than she thought.)</p><p>She almost tells him, as they’re driving down back roads to the widow’s house, almost.</p><p>
  <em>“I’m the cure, Mulder. I’m the cure but they’re killing me in the process.”</em>
</p><p>The nosebleeds are more frequent. Twice now during this trip she’s had to duck into the bathroom with her hand to her face so he won’t see, won’t suspect.</p><p>She almost wants him to know. Wants him to gather her in his arms, wants to stop this whole mess. Wants him to fix her.</p><p>But they’re in too deep for that, now, she thinks.</p><p>Also, she thinks, <em>How much longer can I keep going like this?</em></p><p>She’s been following him and his informant for months now. He’s never brought it up to her, until suddenly, he does.</p><p>“A man told me not to take this case,” he says as they’re driving down back Idaho roads. He’s anxious, white-knuckling the steering wheel. The fact his phone was bugged (she wondered when he would figure that out) has shaken him.</p><p>“What man?”</p><p>“I don’t know.”</p><p>“You shouldn’t trust him,” she says automatically, replacing the <em>him</em> at the end of her sentence with <em>me.</em></p><p>“Why not?” he asks, frowning.</p><p>But she doesn’t have a good answer, and she knows he knows it.</p>
<h2>xvii. 1993.</h2><p>They’re watching them outside the diner. She excuses herself to go to the restroom and meets them.</p><p>“We need this information.”</p><p>“I know,” she says through clenched teeth.</p><p>“They’re going to fight you being here.”</p><p>“Who? The military?”</p><p>She doesn’t know why she expects a straight answer anymore.</p><p>“What happened to Budahas? What did you do to him?”</p><p>“We didn’t do anything,” they say. “But be careful which questions you ask. Who you talk to. Word gets around in this town.”</p><p>She doesn’t tell them about the man warning Mulder away from the case, just in case they don’t already know.</p><p>She wants to keep something to herself.</p><p>“He knows his phone was tapped,” she says, if only to give them something. One of them raises an eyebrow. “He wants to look into Ellens Air Force Base.”</p><p>“Let him,” they say. “We want to see what he finds.”</p>
<h2>Before</h2><p>“Who is Mulder?”</p><p>He looks up at her, his expression betraying nothing.</p><p>“Where did you hear that name?”</p><p>“Don’t worry about that,” she says. “Who is he?”</p><p>“He,” the man says, standing. “Is no one you need to worry about right now.”</p><p>“What does he know?” she asks, pressing.</p><p>“Go back to your research, Dana,” he says. She recoils. No one has called her that since Melissa, since her mother. Only her family is allowed to call her that. Here she is Scully, reduced to her father’s last name, and at times it’s the only thing that brings her comfort, some small piece of him, his strength. He would prevail through this, and it is that strength she draws on.</p><p>Sometimes it isn’t enough.</p>
<h2>xviii</h2><p>Colonel Budahas shakes her to the core, this man returning home with gaps in his memory, a failed experiment by the military.</p><p>This is what could have happened to her. What did happen to Julie, forever ago, what she doesn’t want to think about.</p><p>She is silent on the car ride to the Air Force base.</p><p>She is scared of what they will find. When they pull up the sun is setting. It would be romantic, she thinks, if she wasn’t so damn scared.</p><p>She looks at him, his profile framed by the setting sun, an orange line outlining his face. She wants him to keep driving, straight down the highway, bypassing this Air Force base and the mess she’s gotten herself into and wants him to keep her safe.</p><p>Instead, he parks at the bottom of the hill, near a <em>No Trespassing</em> sign, and waits.</p><p>She mocks him because she is scared what he’ll find could change everything for them both.</p><p>(She hopes he finds nothing.)</p>
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